Because of their high quality and secure construction, vaults are a very expensive part of the infrastructure of a bank or like facility. Hence, they are generally made as small as possible consistent with the secure storage requirements of the institution. Customers of banks, however, often insist upon having a personal safe deposit box in the bank within which they do business. Thus, it eventually becomes necessary to add additional safe deposit box capacity to accommodate an expanding customer base.
A new vault is inordinately expensive. And existing vaults are quite compact and efficient already, preventing the addition of any new boxes. This problem is made more acute in an age of bank consolidation where customers from several institutions may be folded into one institution with one vault. The present invention solves this problem by providing a way to fit additional safe deposit boxes into existing vaults.